tribute: tom Petty
1950 – 2017
us writer Jeff slate remembers the singular voice and heart-piercing guitar work of a true american rock ‘n’ roll innovator
By now the news has sunk in: Tom Petty, the legendary songwriter, Traveling Wilbury and leader of his beloved band the Heartbreakers, died on 2 October, aged 66 in his adopted home of Los Angeles, after suffering a massive heart attack. His death, as unexpected as it was tragic, was yet another blow for fans of rock ‘n’ roll. We’ve lost so many legendary artists in the past few years it’s almost as though we are collectively numb. But even after losing David Bowie, Prince, Gregg Allman and so many others recently, Petty’s death still hit particularly hard.
Perhaps it was because Petty had soundtracked so many of our lives, often without the accolades enjoyed by his contemporaries, or because he never seemed to lose the down home humility that made him one of the most likeable rock stars around. And coming just a few days after he and the Heartbreakers wrapped a five-month 40th anniversary tour, which included a triumphant show at London’s Hyde Park, and found Petty and the band in absolutely top form, it has been especially hard to fathom.
“We pretty much are who we are,” the Heartbreakers’ guitarist Mike Campbell told Guitarist in 2014. “Our act isn’t a phony act. We don’t put on a different face when we perform. We just walk out there and we’re ourselves. We’re honest about what we are and don’t pretend to be anything we aren’t.”
That quote, from the man who had been Petty’s bandmate and songwriting collaborator since they were teens, a man closer than anyone to him, pretty much sums up the legendary musician’s career. It was that authenticity – a word we throw around far too often these days, but that seems all too appropriate in Petty’s case – that was almost palpable when you watched Petty live, or spoke to him in person.
Enduring Inspiration
Of course it was Petty who drew many of us who grew up in the 1970s (as well as the 80s and beyond) to pick up the guitar in the first place. I remember seeing him wielding an exotic looking guitar – which turned out to be a Rickenbacker Fireglo 625/12 – on the cover of his breakout album Damn the Torpedoes, an image of effortless cool.
“My original 12-string, from the cover of ...Torpedoes, is one of the little body ones,” Mike Campbell told me for
Guitarist in 2014 of the infamous guitar. “I got it for $120 back in the day and later I took it to Rickenbacker and they said it was the next guitar off the assembly line after George’s [Harrison]. It has the same wiring and sound as George’s.”
When I once mentioned how powerful the effect of seeing him with that guitar was, with a pink backdrop, no less, he didn’t hesitate.
“It was red,” he said firmly, in a goodnatured way, but that also ended the debate. He went on to explain that the original cover was red, but that as the print runs continued the colour got lighter and lighter. Hence pink.
Still, there was no debating the power of Petty and his Ricky. Like many of you, after seeing Damn the Torpedoes in a friend’s record collection, my mind was made up: I had to have one. And when I heard the music inside, I wanted to learn to play the songs. Every one of them. If all that Petty had given to rock ‘n’ roll was to inspire a generation to pick up the electric guitar after seeing that album cover, his contribution would be incalculable. Of course there was so much more.
But Petty didn’t just front a great band, and it wasn’t simply his remarkable origin story – a chance meeting with Elvis as a young kid and turning the lightning bolt inspiration of seeing The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 into a career – that set him apart. Petty wrote song after song that touched souls across the world, long after the wells his contemporaries drew from had run dry. In fact, while many artists enjoy their most fertile period during their first brush with fame (when Petty wrote Breakdown and
I Need To Know) or after a few years, when they’d hit their stride (when Petty became a household name with Refugee and Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around) he went on to write songs as strong or, sometimes, even better than his early work long into his fourth decade as a recording artist.
And the guitars he wielded in concert: Strats, Gibson Flying Vs and Rickenbacker 360s at first, plus SGs, Teles and, of course, a Guild 12-string acoustic later, were eye candy for any aspiring musician in his growing audiences. And there were plenty, judging by the looks of the air guitarists at his shows.
Wildflowers, from 1994, when Petty had nearly 20 years under his belt as a
songwriter, is undeniably heralded as his greatest work. Deep, empathetic, universal and yet achingly intimate, the album would set his legend in stone. That he continued to deliver albums chock full of instant classics, culminating with 2014’s Hypnotic Eye, staggeringly his first US No 1, is a testament to how seriously he took the craft of songwriting, and how great the Heartbreakers were as interpreters of the lightning he continually captured in a bottle.
He once explained how he captured the lightning. Not surprisingly, he put it down to an intense focus, something he clearly had in spades. It’s easy to grab a great verse or even a catchy chorus from thin air, he said. But turning that into a song that will stand the test of just a man and his guitar, takes long, hard work, often at the expense of everything else in his life.
He also bemoaned the then-recent retirement of his long-serving Gibson Hummingbird, which he’d bought when he was 18. He’d written just about every song from his 1976 debut up to
Highway Companion (2006) on it, but it was literally coming apart at the seams, and he’d reconciled that it was time to move on. In fact, except for his
The Last DJ album, for which he wrote many of the songs on piano, he almost always composed alone with an acoustic, in the workroom at his home, free of distraction, for as long as it took for him to see his inspiration to completion.
But as much as Petty loved his huge collection of vintage gear – a visit to the Heartbreakers’ Los Angeles ‘Clubhouse’ was a dream for any gearhead – he wasn’t afraid of the new. Petty embraced the music video as an art form and legitimate storytelling device at a time when other artists of his era were doing dance steps or miming half-heartedly, almost always with painful results. The videos for You Got Lucky, Don’t Come Around Here No
More, Mary Jane’s Last Dance and You Don’t Know How It Feels propelled those songs into the public consciousness in a way that is almost incomprehensible in today’s information-saturated world. They grew Petty’s audience almost beyond reason, earning him a clutch of nominations and awards from MTV.
Of course for guitar players it was his videos featuring live performance – like
Change Of Heart where Petty virtually pummels his Strat into submission, or any of the Heartbreakers’ concert videos – that made the biggest impact.
“Tom is really interested in the latest technology,” Robert Scovill, Petty’s long-serving Front of House chief told me in 2014. “You might not think so, but he really wants to know what the latest, cutting-edge stuff is, and he wants to know if it can be incorporated into what he does in a way that works for him.”
No doubt about it, it says a lot that an artist known for his love of traditional songwriting, vintage instruments and amps, and the sound a good old-fashioned rock ‘n’ roll band made wasn’t afraid of what might be coming next.
StillGotMojo
I finally met Petty in 2010 at a listening party for his then current album Mojo. He was already a legend, a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, and a Wilbury. In a roomful of Heartbreakers and the New York City music scene cognoscenti I was lucky enough to wind up seated next to Petty and his wife Dana for the evening.
It was fun watching Petty react to the music he was listening to, during his first experience of the surround mix. He smiled and bounced in his seat, and let out long, loud guttural Florida by way of LA chuckles, looking over his sunglasses at me, whenever he heard something he liked, mostly at the astonishing stew of Duane Allmanand Jimmy Page-inspired sounds Mike Campbell coaxed from his newly acquired vintage 1959 Les Paul.
“Tom was listening to a lot of old blues records and Mike (Campbell, the Heartbreakers’ guitarist) was listening to a lot of Zeppelin,” Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench said of the inspiration behind the Mojo sessions.
“I didn’t come in with all the riffs worked out, except for in a few places where I knew what I wanted,” Petty recalled, still clearly buoyant from his first time hearing the 5.1 mix. “In most
cases I just came in and strummed an acoustic and played the songs to the band. We did four sessions of about 10 days each and just developed the songs in our rehearsal space live, right there on the floor (of the studio).”
Campbell later revealed that the songs – many of which were acoustic based – developed as a result of the excitement and power of his new secret weapon.
“Tom loved the sound of my Les Paul,” he said. “It sounded raunchy and bluesy without us even trying. It really was a case of the sound of the guitar guiding us in many cases.”
In due course, I ended up in a long conversation with Dana Petty, which the man himself eventually sidled up to join. Petty was incredibly open and engaging, and we talked about Bob Dylan and George Harrison. His love and respect for both men was evident. But when I asked about his other Wilburys bandmate Roy Orbison, he lit up.
“Roy was just the sweetest guy, and he had the most amazing laugh,” he said, perking up at the memory of the late, great singer. “He had the most amazing voice, even if he was just working something out, it was always just… there.”
While I wasn’t in attendance to interview Petty – in fact I didn’t even know he was coming – I made sure to make detailed notes of our conversation. The candour, wit and warmth with which Petty spoke was so palpable, I simply didn’t want to forget anything he said. Now, of course, I’m glad I did.
In the next seven years I made a special point of connecting with the Heartbreakers family every time they came through town. I was never welcomed with anything less than open arms, and it became something I looked forward to with an anticipation you can probably imagine. And so I got to see multiple theatre shows of deep cut residencies at New York’s Beacon Theater – where Petty’s longtime roadie Bugs graciously let me inspect Petty’s pedalboard and formidable rack of guitars. An enthusiast for vintage gear, over the years Petty used a selection of Vox, Fender, Hiwatt and Marshall amps, including a Vox Super Beatle, a Marshall JMP50 Plexi and a Fender Vibro-King 60 watt combo. For effects he had a selection that included Boss, Demeter, Maestro, Real McCoy and Way Huge. But it was his guitar collection that took pride of place. Apart from his Rickenbackers, Tom had a fondness for 1960s Strats and Teles, Gretsch Country Gentleman and Tennessean guitars and Gibson and Martin acoustics.
As far as his on stage sound was concerned, Petty claimed there was no magic formula, he just wanted his amp to provide a full sound with some significant bottom end. Obviously a tone connoisseur he switched from Vox amps to a Fender Bassman, subsequently changing to Marshall when he found the Fenders “too growly”. In the early days, he’d used a Vox Super Beatle, choosing to revisit them for a tour later in his career where he switched between the Marshall (through a Vox cabinet) and the Beatle amp. But he always claimed that the unique factor in the Heartbreakers’ sound was the interplay between him and Mike Campbell, adding that it was something that didn’t happen when either of them played with other people. There was just something there between them that created the magic.
Special Swan Song
In July the band played the historic Forest Hills Stadium. The shows were nothing short of a celebration, and bore no hint of the tragedy that would come all too soon. Petty and the Heartbreakers tore through hit after hit, and even dipped into some lesser known gems that kept them, and the audience, on their toes. Petty and Campbell traded licks that seemed both second nature and born from in-the-moment inspiration, which, as any guitarist worth their salt knows, is no mean feat. There were lots of smiles, the warmth and affection shared by the band, and especially Petty, Campbell, Tench and bassist Ron Blair, was clear.
Joining Robert Scovill at the mixing desk for Refugee, Runnin’ Down A Dream and the encore, American Girl, I shouted over the crowd: “I don’t know how you’ll top tonight.” Now, they don’t have to.
He is survived by his second wife, Dana, daughters Adria and AnnaKim, his stepson, Dylan, from Dana’s previous marriage, brother, Bruce, and granddaughter, Everly.